Many here talk about road disc, but tandems actually use road disc, and have been for years.

Tandems generally use mechanical disc, and this has long been the Avid BB7. TRP, however, just released the dual-piston Spyre, and the weight weenie 146 gram Spyre SLC. Lots of info about the Spyre here.

Spyre SLC on our Calfee tandem:

Spyres get more braking engagement with less braking pull than the Avid BB7, which is important, as Campagnolo levers don't have the pull of Shimano, and a tandem has a looong cable.

The engagement I get now with the Campy levers is allright, but I wouldn't mind it to be tighter. I want to eliminate all compression and direct every millimeter of lever travel into brake power (I imagine this will be true as well for single road bikes with mechanical discs, so this topic is not just specific to tandems!).

The question is, what brake cable housing has the least compression? My LBS recommended Odyssey BMX cable, but my impression is that the ferrule weight weenie cable housing (e.g Nokon, i-Link, etc) also have very little compression (less than Jagwire?). If so, which of the ww housings have the least compression?

I have previously used Gore Ride On pro and sealed low friction on my cross bike which is currently equipped - that is until I can obtain a set of TRP Spyre SLC - with Shimano CX75 mechanical disc brakes which I found worked well initially but after 15-20 hours of cross racing, the teflon linerthat coats the cable started to flake off resulting in sticky/degraded action at the lever. Next I tried Yokozuna Reaction brake cables which are very good with slightly thicker brake cables than others and think those would do nicely but not sure if the housing or rear cable length would work for a tandem. Currently I use Jagwire Hyper Brake Kit with Braided housing on the cross bike and brake response/action with those cables is the best I have experienced but I think you might find the Yokozuna more suitable for braking on the tandem.

We've recently built a brake test jig and have tested a bunch of caliper brakes, once we write and publish the results we'll be using the same jig to do some testing on brake levers, cables and perhaps of more interest to you cable housing compression. My gut feeling is that Nokon will top the chart in compression.

The engagement I get now with the Campy levers is allright, but I wouldn't mind it to be tighter. I want to eliminate all compression and direct every millimeter of lever travel into brake power (I imagine this will be true as well for single road bikes with mechanical discs, so this topic is not just specific to tandems!).

The question is, what brake cable housing has the least compression? My LBS recommended Odyssey BMX cable, but my impression is that the ferrule weight weenie cable housing (e.g Nokon, i-Link, etc) also have very little compression (less than Jagwire?). If so, which of the ww housings have the least compression?

Have you thought about trying shifter housing? If you cannot find larger shifter housing, I know bontrager/Trek makes smaller brake cable that will fit inside standard shifter housing. If there isn't enough compression you might be able to mix the two to fine tune the feel you are looking for.

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